


Hang Them Up (To Make Them Bleed)

by classical_mess



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Attempted Murder, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Body Modification, Emotional Hurt, Haruno Sakura-centric, Hokage, Hurt No Comfort, Murder vibes, One Shot, Other, Root Haruno Sakura, Sad times, Sharigan, Strong Haruno Sakura, Suicidal Thoughts, War Crimes, Weapons, exactly one hug, not canon, trail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26993599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classical_mess/pseuds/classical_mess
Summary: Sakura always used to think a lot of her career as a ninja, but she never thought she'd up here.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Inuzuka Kiba, Haruno Sakura & Shimura Danzou, haruno sakura and weapons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 198





	Hang Them Up (To Make Them Bleed)

Hang them up (to make them bleed)

\---  
There were lots of things that led Sakura to where she was now. Sitting on the bathroom floor just outside the council room in the Hokage Tower as Tenten did her best to undo the most complex seal she’s ever seen, let alone the fact that it was on Sakura’s tongue. Between the inky taste in her mouth and the feeling of sweaty flesh, with the addition of the bloody wound in her side, Sakura was trying to distract herself from her reality. 

Sakura always put an effort into not looking desirable. She liked to disappoint people and not be what they expected her to be. If she disappointed people before they got to know her then they wouldn’t stay long enough to hurt her. Then they wouldn't be disappointed by the real Sakura but she know longer knew who that was. 

She only wished that she had made a few real friends before everything went to shit. 

\---

Sakura was barely even thirteen when everything started, though one could argue it was long before that, but this was the moment that had sealed her fate. 

It took a lot of courage for Sakura to walk right up to the brand new Hokage and plead to be her student. It took every ounce of willpower and hope that Sakura had left. It was for nothing though, she was turned away. Sakura was a civilian born after all, why would the Hokage waste time on her. 

Sakura was exiting the building when she first met him- Shimaru Danzo- and Sakura thought she was saved. 

\---- 

They had been doing this for months now. Kiba found Sakura whenever she managed to touch down in Konoha. It made things better. She was pulling out of the fog more and more. The brainwashing she went though was light, she was broken when they started anyway.

They would figure out ways for Sakura to tell Kiba things, or he’d guess and Sakura would find the most backwards ways to deny or validate him. 

The seal had its limits afterall. 

Kiba swore that he would help her and it looked like it was working. 

\---

It was a normal meet up for what was left of the rookie nine but Ino couldn’t help but feel as if everything had changed.

“Where is the red ribbon I gave you kiba?” 

“Someone else needed it more.”

Ino ended up breaking up with Kiba a week later but he didn’t seem to be phased. It only fuels whatever half-baked ideas she has about what happened. 

But better a scoundrel than on Danzo’s hit list Kiba thinks. 

Kiba pretended to sleep around after that. It made his mother disappointed but that was still better than the alternative. 

\---

The true start of Sakura’s descent into worse than mediocrity was when she tore up her friendship with Ino.  
It’s still one of her biggest regrets. 

Sakura never had great self esteem and she liked pissing people off because if she wasn’t the only one that hated her then it shouldn’t be so bad.

That wasn’t it though, Sakura had always been a little bit stronger than most kids her age- taller too- which made her fast. So she never tried as hard in class, or doing her training homework, afterall if it made Ino and Sasuke upset if she beat them so why would she do it. They still didn’t like her when she lost anyway. 

\---

Tenten had never seen such a complex seal before. 

Kiba had been hinting and showed her an example of the seal he wanted her to do but she had no idea the depth of what he was asking her. 

Not that she would ever regret doing it, she was just scared. Scared for the pink haired girl whose life was now in her hands. The same pink haired girl who during the first chunin exams asked her if she would teach her to wield a blade. If only Tenten had made an effort to seek out the girl instead of passively waiting or even forgetting, then maybe things would have been different. 

\---

Sakura had never really liked Sasuke but her parents liked those connections. So she played an act in between. She knew he hated his fangirls and her parents couldn't fault her for joining the pack.

If only it hasn't screwed her when she joined a team. 

She was serious about being a ninja, but she didn’t know how to stop being who she was pretending to be. 

\---

It was an accident that Sakura stumbled across all the things she did. She was just another pawn on the board, one of the lowest really. Maybe that was why late at night she would be who some of the others go to and spill their guts. 

She was good at being silent and listening and pretending. She could comfort and remember and simmer. Until she boiled and Sakura would be damned if she didn’t burn this place down with her. 

Every little bit of information they slipped, they all had seals after all. There were no secrets among them. There was barely a them to begin with when your entire humanity is stripped from you after all. It took a lot more to get evidence as Sakura and the others couldn’t say or even write a word of what they knew to any other. 

If she could get enough to Kiba and he could piece it together, then maybe Danzo could be taken down. 

\---

It was the biggest and the most secret court case Ibiki had ever handled and he had no idea how this rambunctious chunin found out about it. However, ‘look underneath the underneath’ seemed to be the latest ninja motto and suddenly Kiba’s behaviour made sense. No one would expect him to be collecting information and with his sense of smell and nin-dog that opened up a whole new way of getting messages. 

How did you get this information - Ibiki signed out slowly making sure that their conversation about what his sister’s new boyfriend is believable. It seemed like nothing more than him indulging the boy on what his subordinate is like. 

They needed help… root - Kiba replied as he took a sip of a drink. Let them move the court case up… before they catch on to the missing documents…

That was all Ibiki needed. The chunin knew way more than the Hokage and the whole ANBU force it seemed. 

\----

Kiba entered the courtroom and everyone went silent. He could only imagine the thoughts running in their heads and if it wasn’t for the thrumming of his own heart in his ears he would surely hear whispers. 

"Sup' motherfucker," Kiba grinned dasterdously. "Our witness needs a few more moments but until then I am more than happy to begin their case. I think we can muster up some damning evidence while we wait. Gotta keep this shit entertaining afterall." 

Kiba watched out of the corner of his eye as his own mother almost got up only to be put down by a harsh glare from Ibiki. Letting out a sigh he didn’t even know he was holding, at least one person was on their side. 

“Let’s start with the evidence we have in this room.” Kiba speaks causing unrest to spread throughout the room. “How about somebody take off his sleeves and break the genjutsu. I think what we find there will speak for itself.”

\---

Sakura could remember all the atrocities she committed like the back of her hand. It was one of those nights when she was drowning in them that Kiba found her. She was masked and bleeding from her arm, she liked the sting and it let her know she was still alive, as she sat out in the middle of a random training ground. It was 4 am in the morning and all she wanted to do was drown in the pond in the next training ground over.

If she got any closer she knew she'd do it. That was part of the reason why she still sat there, as the adrenaline in her body died down. If the mission didn’t kill her would she let herself? What was she but a weapon? What would be left if she just did it. Danzo would be annoyed, Sakura was good at being a pawn afterall. After her missions were over she was just the remains of a used up bomb seal- only good to be thrown away or put on the shelf for later. 

“What the fuck?”

Those three words broke some tension in Sakura as she whirled around in a panic. 

“Sakura?” The voice called out quietly. “Uhhmm, breathe, it’s okay. I’m Konoha.” He points to the headband he wore. “We were classmates in the academy.”

Sakura lowered her guard slightly. Well, that was a lie. She just pretended she did. 

Kiba took this as his cue to continue to speak. “Akamaru smelt blood and we recognized it from the Academy. We couldn’t place it… but you’d be the only one unaccounted for from the class.” 

“Oh,” Sakura said with a tilt of her head. “Kiba?” She called out as if coming out of a fog. It was like this was the first time she had thought of her past life in years. 

“You’re definitely different.”

“Yeah.” 

“Why don’t you let me patch up your arm.” Kiba offers as he rummages through his pack, glancing at her as if she was a spooked animal 

“What happened?”

“Lot’s of things.”

“Are you okay?” 

“Not really.” Sakura didn’t know why she was letting him so close let alone answering his questions but she was just so tired and he was familiar. Kiba was the safest thing, the safest person she had encountered in years. The ghost from the part of her life she had thought she had lost. 

Sakura cried. She cried for the first time since the night Mongoose-san beat her in the underground bunker and the seal was burnt onto her tongue. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“S-,” Sakura opted to just open her mouth and Kiba caught sight of the seal. 

There were rumors of course, about the masked-nin with the seals in their mouth. Root, or branch or whatever he wasn’t sure what they were called, but fuck, if Sakura was cought up- has been caught up with them. He wanted to vomit. “I’ll help you.” He choked it down and pulled her into a hug. The first one she has had since Ino. 

\---

Danzo’s right arm was littered with sharingans. They throbbed, unblinking in his arm. That was damning enough but how the hell did Kiba Inzuka find out. Surgery scars stuck out from the corner of them. 

They were all suddenly very glad they blocked his chakra and have him bound. 

\----

If Kiba’s own entrance wasn’t dramatic enough the mysterious masked figure, with a wound bleeding on her side, was more so. Inoichi couldn’t help but hope that this supposed witness was what Kiba said she was. Especially considering all the information that Kiba handed out much to their surprise. 

They were expecting small things. Not the large bombs he had dropped. 

The judge asked her name. Ibiki looked to him with a look of confusion. Kakashi tightened his hand until it bled. Inoichi couldn’t help but worry for a moment more. 

“I’m mouse.” She began as she made it to the witness stand. “But-” She added as she reached a hand to her mask. “Many of you might know me as someone else.” She continues in a soft voice as she pulls off her mask breaking the genjutsu embedded into it, the dark hair that once covered her head was replaced with the bright pink hair and green eyes blinked up at the audience. “I’m Haruno Sakura and when I was thirteen, two months after the chunin exams, I was forcibly abducted under Shimura Danzo’s orders into the shadow organization Root- also under the control of Shimura Danzo.”

She knew she was talking after that. Anything she could think of, she didn’t have a rhyme or reason as she spoke and no one bothered her. She had thirty minutes to say whatever she wanted for the last time and she wouldn’t waste it talking about herself anymore. 

\----

Inoichi had never felt sicker. Sakura had been Ino’s best friend for a while. The girl had eaten at his table. He knew her name. He had kno- Ino said she couldn’t find Sakura after the chunin exams and said she assumed that Sakura had ended up marrying outside of the village because of her family. 

He should have looked into it more.  
\---

It was like a switch was flipped in Kiba. He was used to being an extra in the village- not cannon fodder but also not particularly important. He was a clan heir but not the clan heir, he was proficient but no prodigy, he had goals but no real motivation or ambition. Now all of a sudden he did. Kiba had someone to save, he was never one for lofty goals like Naruto. He never thought he’d be like Sasuke though, a single mindedness to get better for one person, but Sakura deserved to be saved and if he took out an entire shadow government in Konoha to do it then so be it. 

He threw himself into his training like never before and took up studying Konoha’s laws specifically regarding shinobi and what it could take to get Danzo executed. 

His mother said she was worried. 

He said not to - they both knew he wasn’t confident when he said that. 

\---

Kakashi almost ran from the room. He would have if he wasn’t supposed to be guarding the building. 

His fellow ANBU looked to Kakashi for a moment and he had to look away. 

She was his student and what did he let happen to her. 

He thought he saved her.  
His father  
Obito  
Rin  
Minato and Kushina  
He wasn’t even enough for Sasuke  
And now Sakura  
Would he ever be able to touch something without killing it. 

\----

Sakura had dropped to the floor and Tenten had never felt more guilty. She promised Sakura freedom and all the girl got was thirty minutes. 

Sakura said thank you. 

Tenten couldn’t stop crying. 

She had to be pulled from the body by a jounin as they rushed her to the hospital and Ten Ten was quickly replaced by Tsunade at her side. 

Who knew if she would live through the hour, but what was clear that Danzo would not be. 

\---

Sakura had fallen into the darkness of the mind thrashing against the pain running through her body. She couldn’t help but wonder and Naruto and Sasuke would think of her now. If she was really going to die their she at least had the right to be bitter about it.


End file.
